A tea farm in Laoling village (劳岭村) has opened a café where customers can pick leaf from the bushes outside and make tea themselves. It is called Chashanli (茶杉里), and Deqing News (德清新闻网) reported on 17 October 2026 that it opened formally this month.
The building was an empty roadside rest stop (驿站) near the village’s avenue of dawn redwoods (水杉大道), on the south side of the mountain. Gao Guozhi (高国治) took it over this year. He is a second generation tea man with nearly thirty years in the trade. He is also a county level heritage bearer (非遗传承人) for the making of Mogan Huangya (莫干黄芽), the mountain’s own tea. The 200 mu (about 13 hectares) of bushes around the house have been there since the 1950s or 1960s, he told the paper, and now grow mostly leaf for matcha.
A reporter who called on the afternoon of 12 October found customers chatting over their drinks while Gao pan fired tea in the same room. There is coffee, but about half the menu is made from tea. Gao said the leaf is picked in the garden on the day, and that more than 200 people come through on a weekend or a holiday. The farm used to be busy only in spring, at picking time, and he wants the café to bring people in for the rest of the year.
Most of what you would want before going is missing from the report. It gives no opening hours and no prices, and the only address is the redwood avenue. It does not say whether picking and making have to be booked or are simply offered when Gao is at the stove. Dianping, the usual check that a place is trading, answered with a verification wall, so the opening rests on the county paper, whose reporter saw it serving.
Laoling is the reservoir and cycling village in our villages guide. What Mogan Huangya is, and why so much of it is made green, is in our page on the tea.
What this means for a visitor: If you are on the south side of the mountain this autumn, you can watch tea fired by a recognised Mogan Huangya maker without waiting for spring, but ask your guesthouse to check it is open before you go.
Sources
- 德清新闻网 (Deqing News, reporters Chen Mingyue and Yao Haixiang), , tier 2, dated regional or trade press. Read the original
Tiers follow the site's source rules: the county portal, the scenic area's own channel and the statistics bureaus are the record; regional and trade press are dated fact; anything promotional is a tip until confirmed.
Last checked 19 October 2026 by Echo Peng. Prices, timetables and entry rules on this mountain move without notice, so confirm anything you are booking around.
Photographs on this site are representative illustrations, not documentary images of the specific building, property or service described.